Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.09.2015, Síða 16

Within
He Came
16 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 15 — 2015
He spent some time working on Old Nor-
dic texts in his university days, the film-
maker tells me over the phone in our brief
chat, particularly Njáls Saga and Laxdæ-
la, and couldn't pass up the opportunity
to see the places where they happened.
Just the names of the places in the sagas
are richly suggestive of the history that
unfolded there, for this year's major guest
of honour at RIFF, David Cronenberg.
The Body Artist
Wait a minute—David Cronenberg?
Like, exploding heads? James Woods
merging with his home cinema? Marilyn
Chambers turning people into zombies
with her armpit? Granting that Njáls
Saga includes the famous scene in which
Skarphéðinn's “axe crashed down on on
[Þráinn's] head and split it down to the
jaw-bone, spilling the back-teeth on to
the ice,” a description which matches
outré viscerality with surgical precision
in a way consistent with the filmmaker’s
mythos (and that sounds like something
Viggo Mortensen might have done in 'A
History of Violence'), it is nevertheless
surprising to hear David Cronenberg
profess an affinity for these stories of
kinship, custom and landscape.
Because, you see, it's right there in
the RIFF program, in the filmmaker's
own words, taken from a 1989 inter-
view: “I think the mind grows out of
the body. I don’t believe in an afterlife.
I don’t see the mind or the spirit or the
soul continuing after our body dies.
The mind and body are completely
dependent and interrelated. The mind
is somehow organic and physical. It’s
only our perception and our culture
that keeps them separate.” Cronen-
berg's legacy is as cinema's foremost
Body Artist, the filmmaker who works
through ideas about the nature of
identity by conducting unsanctioned
experiments on human flesh. Where
do the sagas fit in with all that?
And, in the selection of Cronen-
berg films showing at RIFF, you can
see variations on the theme. In 'The
Brood' (1979), domestic troubles be-
come literal, and corporeal, as a fam-
ily is tormented by stunted genderless
rage-babies growing out of a sac in
the ailing mother's abdomen. In 'The
Fly' (1986), Jeff Goldblum's nerdy-hot
scientist is fused with the DNA of a
housefly in a teleportation experi-
ment gone horribly wrong, and Geena
Davis has to watch her lover change
and decay in horrifying ways. In 'Dead
Ringers' (1989), Jeremy Irons plays
identical-twin gynecologists whose
symbiosis begins to break down, and
one of whom invents a series of hor-
rifying implements for “operating on
mutant women.” In 'Crash' (1996), a
community of sex fetishists fuck in
cars, fondle each other's scars, and
seek out the “fertilizing” energy of
an automobile smash-up. In 'Eastern
Promises' (2007), tattoos signify past
deeds and status within a commu-
nity of Russian mobsters (and Viggo
Mortensen stabs a guy while naked).
In all these films, the self is purely
RIFF's guest of honour, West-Icelander David
Cronenberg, brings his personal, visceral films to
Iceland, and into the worldWords by Mark Asch
Photo by Caitlin Cronenberg
Videodrome
(1983)
Back in the early 80s, we all believed VHS
would slowly take over first our minds and
then our bodies, supplanting what had up
to then been known as reality. Of course,
we now know that it would take another
decade and the Internet to achieve this.
Nevertheless, ‘Videodrome’ remains com-
pelling, either as an example of how new
technology always creates new fears or
perhaps as prescient warning of things to
come. Also, James Woods.
The Dead Zone
(1983)
What would you do if you knew that a fu-
ture president of the United States was a
madman hellbent on destroying the world?
In the age of Trump, the obvious answer
seems to be: Vote for him, of course. One
wonders what crystal ball Cronenberg
was peering into in 1983, but both these
films were also infused with a healthy dose
of Cold War paranoia, with the twist that
in both cases, we are the bad guys. Also,
Christopher Walken.
The Fly
(1986)
Perhaps Cronenberg's most haunting proj-
ect, ‘The Fly’ draws on Kafka with its man-
as-insect motif but is in fact a remake of a
1958 film. The former version was no doubt
inspired by science leading mankind to the
possibility of nuclear holocaust, but the lat-
ter version is no less informed by the AIDS
epidemic with its images of a man’s body
falling apart. Yes, the 80s were indeed a
miserable time to be alive. I remember. I
was there. Also, Jeff Goldblum.
Dead Ringers
(1988)
A pair of twins use their resemblance to
one another to share lovers, unbeknownst
to the ladies involved. Until one of the them
falls in love and becomes a pill addict. Both
are gynecologists, and the special tools
one of them has made for surgery after
he loses it are as harrowing as anything
Cronenberg has come up with before or
since. Based on a true story, of course.
Also, Jeremy Irons. Times two.
The Reykjavík International Film Festival may not un-
veil the season’s most anticipated premieres, or unfurl
its longest, plushest red carpet, but one thing it has on
the competition: it is the only film festival that can of-
fer its guest of honor a trip to Iceland. One recipient of
a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s festival last
touched down in Iceland in the 1960s, when Loftleiðir was
the cheapest way to get between North America and the
UK. Now, he’s submitting to the ritual of being celebrated
by strangers for decades-old work, in part, for a chance
to revisit the country, this time for longer than it takes to
change planes.
An Almost
Totally Random
Selection Of
David Cronenberg
Films, Described
Words by Valur Gunnarsson
From